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He blamed himself for that.
He’d gone about the early part of his investigation all wrong, rushing off to Indigo Springs before conducting any of the background work that was usually the foundation of his reporting.
“Yesterday morning I received an e-mail suggesting your father might know something about the death of Allison Blaine,” he said.
“Allison Blaine,” Ryan repeated, then shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“She died quite a while ago.” Ben struggled to keep his voice free of the emotion that threatened to clog his throat. “In a fall from a cliff.”
“I remember something like that.” Sierra’s brows drew together. “She was a tourist, right? It seems like the town organized a search. Didn’t a fisherman find her body?”
“That’s about the extent of it,” Ben said.
“But wasn’t that, like, twenty years ago?” Sierra asked.
The date of the day that had forever altered his life was carved into Ben’s mind like an engraving. The anniversary of his mother’s death would be in three months. “Nineteen.”
“I don’t understand.” Sierra shook her head. “Why are you looking into this now, after all this time? And what does our father have to do with it?”
Ben moistened his lips. “I already told you about the e-mail.”
“You haven’t told us what was in it,” Ryan pointed out.
Do you know what really happened to your mother?
Ben didn’t repeat the question aloud. His personal involvement had already clouded his usually clear judgment. If he could treat this like any other story, he’d have a much better chance of uncovering the truth. That meant not telling the Whitmores or anyone else in town he was Allison Blaine’s son.
“The e-mail asked why Dr. Ryan Whitmore wasn’t questioned about her death.” He relayed the substance of the message, substituting “questioned” for “investigated.”
“What!” Sierra cried. “Why would he be? Wasn’t her death an accident?”
“It was ruled an accident,” Ben clarified. “The e-mail casts doubt on that.”
“Who sent this e-mail?” Sierra asked sharply.
“I don’t know yet. The only fact I have is that it originated from Indigo Springs.” Ben explained how the newspaper’s IT department had tracked the e-mail to one of the public-access computers at the library.
“Let me get this straight,” Sierra said tightly, her posture as rigid as her words. She moved closer to her silent brother, as though to demonstrate they were a united front. “You came here today to accuse our father of God only knows what because of some anonymous e-mail.”
“I’m following a lead,” he said. “I’m not accusing your father of anything.”
“Before you cast stones, you should know he was a very good man with a spotless reputation.” Color infused Sierra’s cheeks even though she didn’t raise her voice. “You know the festival the town is holding next weekend? He’ll be honored for his civic work. The town is renaming the park Whitmore Memorial Park.”
Yet another fact Ben had failed to discover before rushing to Indigo Springs.
“Why are you doing this story at all?” Ryan broke his silence, his tone far less volatile than his sister’s. “Why would a Pittsburgh newspaper be interested in something that happened in Indigo Springs almost twenty years ago?”
“Allison Blaine was from Pittsburgh.” Ben ignored the second, more piercing question. “Look. I didn’t come here to upset anyone. Like I said, I’m exploring a tip. It’s probable your father knew her. Maybe she was one of his patients.”
“That’s unlikely,” Sierra said. “She didn’t live here.”
“It’s still possible. She could have needed a doctor while she was in town,” Ben said. “There’s one way to find out. You could check your records.”
“Why would we do that?” Sierra asked. “What possible benefit could it have for us?”
“It could show Mr. Nash here he’s barking up the wrong tree.” Ryan directed his comment to his sister. He straightened from the desk, laying a hand on her arm. He switched his attention to Ben. “Our records weren’t computerized twenty years ago, but it’ll only take a minute to look through our hard files and tell you if Allison Blaine was ever a patient.”
Ben had been a reporter long enough not to blindly believe the Whitmores would freely share information that didn’t clear their father of suspicion.
“Mind if I come along?” Ben asked in as offhand a manner as he could muster. Sierra seemed about to protest, so he added, “There are a number of ways to spell Blaine.”
“I don’t mind at all.” Ryan let his sister precede him out the door. They followed her down the narrow hall, with Ryan talking as they went. “I need you to understand we can only confirm whether she was a patient. Even the dead are protected by doctor/patient privilege.”
The narrow hall led to a small room with banks of file cabinets lining one wall. Ryan went directly to the first file cabinet and carefully flipped through the manila folders, then shrugged. “Nope. No Allison Blaine.”
Ben wasn’t ready to give up. “She was visiting her parents so it’s possible she came into the office with one of them. Their names were Barbara and Leonard Blaine.”
Ryan turned back to the files. “I don’t see their files, either. Did they live in town long?”
“Not even six months, I think,” Ben said.
“Must have been a healthy six months,” Ryan quipped.
Even if it meant revealing his relationship to Allison Blaine, Ben couldn’t ignore the third possibility. His mother could have brought one of his brothers to see a doctor.
“Is this where you keep the records for pediatric patients?” Ben asked, preparing to request the files be searched for the last name Nash.
“All those records are computerized,” Ryan answered. “We became a family practice when Sierra started working here two years ago. She and I are family physicians. Our father was an internist who treated patients eighteen and over.”
“Allison Blaine wasn’t treated here.” Sierra didn’t seem the least bit curious as to why he’d asked about pediatric patients. “Your lead is a dead end.”
“Not necessarily,” Ben said slowly. “He might have known her personally.”
“There’s no way to confirm that.” Ryan shut the file cabinet, almost as a signal that to the Whitmore siblings the case was closed.
“There could be.” Ben was trained to recognize other avenues that might yield results. “Your mother might know whether your father was acquainted with Allison Blaine. Is she alive?”
“Alive and well,” Ryan said.
“Mind telling me how I can get in touch with her?”
“Yes,” Sierra retorted sharply.
At the same time, her brother answered, “She moved into a retirement community after Dad died.”
“What’s the name of the place?” Ben asked.
“Hold on,” Sierra said before Ryan could supply the information. She moved closer to her brother so their shoulders were almost touching. “I don’t think we should tell him, Ryan.”
“If you don’t, I’ll find out from somebody else.” That was the absolute truth. A good reporter could always locate somebody who was eager to talk, no matter what the subject. “Why not tell me? What are you afraid of?”
Sierra stiffened. “I’m afraid you’ll upset her.”
“Then come with me,” he offered.
“Excuse me?”
“If you’re along,” Ben said, “you can make sure I’m on my best behavior.”
Ben would also increase his chances of getting Sierra to listen to the apology he’d been forming since her attitude toward him had gone from hot to cold.
“What do you say?” He recognized that she’d seen the wisdom in his reply and pressed his advantage. “When you finish up here, will you take me to her?”
She chewed on her lower lip, then glanced at her brother, who gave an almost imperceptible nod. Her eyes once again fastened on Ben.
“I’ll meet you in the office around two,” she said.
MISSING TOURIST FOUND DEAD.
Sierra edged forward in the stiff-backed chair, getting closer to the grainy type displayed on the screen of the microfiche machine in the back corner of the public library. The smell of new carpeting mingled with the slightly musty smell of the old books shelved in the nearby reference section.
She’d come straight from her last patient of the day, determined to equip herself with as much information as possible about Allison Blaine before setting off for her mother’s retirement community with Ben Nash.
She read on.
A local businessman found the body of missing tourist Allison Blaine on the banks of the Lehigh River during the early-morning hours yesterday.
Frank Sublinski, the owner of Indigo River Rafters, had hiked downriver to try out a new fly-fishing spot when he stumbled across the body sprawled amid the rocks at the edge of the river.
Police Chief Alex Rawlings said Blaine did not appear to have drowned and that her injuries were consistent with a fall. “It’s pretty obvious she got too close to the edge and took a tumble,” Rawlings said.
The Riverview Overlook, which provides scenic views of the Lehigh River, is located on a cliff above the section of the river where the tourist’s body was discovered. Local residents have complained in recent months about the lack of a guide rail at the site, especially after the heavy spring rains eroded part of the cliff.
Blaine, a thirty-year-old Pittsburgh resident, had been visiting her parents since last week. Leonard and Barbara Blaine reported their daughter missing twenty-four hours before her body was discovered, spawning a massive search.
A camera was found near Blaine’s body. Rawlings said foul play is not suspected.
Sierra hadn’t remembered that Annie’s father had been the one to find the tourist’s body, but the rest of the article contained no surprises.
“Open and shut,” Sierra whispered aloud. It was easy to imagine Allison Blaine losing her footing on the eroded cliff and falling as she pointed her camera. “So what is Ben Nash doing here?”
She hadn’t found a story leading up to the incident, probably because the Indigo Springs Gazette was a weekly newspaper that went to press on Thursdays. By the time the paper could report that Allison Blaine was missing, her body would have been found.
She quickly scrolled through the rest of the roll of microfilm, locating only a brief item about the bouquets of flowers people had left in memoriam at the overlook. The article mentioned that Allison Blaine’s parents had recently moved to town. She already knew from Ben that they hadn’t stayed long.
Sierra pressed the print button on the machine, then hit Rewind. She was due to meet Ben in ten minutes. If she didn’t hurry, she wouldn’t put it past him to leave without her. After placing the microfilm back in the plastic container, she headed to the research desk.
The young female librarian who’d helped her access the back issues of the Gazette was gone, replaced by an Indigo Springs institution. Louise Wiesneski had once directed Sierra to source material for her high school research papers. More recently, the librarian checked out books Sierra used to fuel her reading habit.
“What brings you here today?” Mrs. Wiesneski asked in an authoritative voice that had the unfortunate tendency to carry. A large woman, she even looked tall sitting down. “The latest mystery? Or one of those sports biographies you’re always reading?”
“Nothing that exciting.” Sierra set the microfilm on the counter and devised a noncommittal answer that would satisfy the nosy librarian. “I was just using the microfiche machine.”
Mrs. Wiesneski picked up the container and checked the label. “Hmm. Nobody’s looked at a back issue of the Gazette in months, yet you’re the second person today who requested this same roll of film.”
“This other person,” Sierra asked. “Was his name Ben Nash?”
“It most certainly was. Said he was a reporter for some newspaper in Pittsburgh. Do you know him?”
“Sort of,” Sierra said absently while she prepared to go against her instincts. The other times she’d been in the library, she’d kept her conversations with Mrs. Wiesneski brief to avoid gossiping. “Did he ask you any questions?”
“As a matter of fact, he did.” Mrs. Wiesneski lowered her too-loud voice, eager to share her information. “He wanted to know if I had a record of everyone who signed on to the Internet Friday morning. Well, you know how busy we get in here come tourist season. People are waiting to use the computers when we open at nine. Even if we did keep a record, which we don’t, I wouldn’t have told him, being as that’s privileged information.”
So Ben had been unsuccessful in tracking down the sender of the anonymous e-mail. Interesting but not unexpected.
“He also asked if I remembered anything about some tourist who died in Indigo Springs a long time ago,” Mrs. Wiesneski continued. “Now you know me, I remember everything. Except that was before my time.”
Sierra’s brows must have lifted, because the other woman kept talking. “I know sometimes it seems like I’ve been here forever, but it’s only been seventeen years. Now are you gonna tell me what this is all about?”
Not likely, Sierra thought.
“Curiosity,” Sierra said. “He asked my brother and me the same kinds of questions.”
The librarian nodded, but the speculative gleam in her eyes suggested she realized Sierra had dodged the question. Her attention wavered, and she nodded to a spot behind Sierra.
“Speak of the devil,” she said.
Sierra quickly turned around to see Ben Nash striding through the library straight toward them with his long, measured gait. Self-assurance poured off him, but she had the impression he’d be surprised if he knew he’d drawn every eye in the place.
“Please thank Betty for her help,” Sierra said hurriedly, referring to the other librarian by name, before quickly moving away from the desk.
Whatever Ben had to say to her would be said in private.
CHAPTER FOUR
BEN WATCHED Sierra Whitmore hurry past the shelf containing the new releases with her chin high and her steps clipped, her pretty mouth turned down at the corners.
He hadn’t expected her to be happy he’d tracked her down yet couldn’t help wishing for the warm smile she’d greeted him with earlier. Before she’d found out who he was and why he was in town.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“I thought we were meeting at my office.”
“I took a chance you’d be here instead.”
Her gaze slid to the reference desk, probably to check if the microfilm she’d been viewing was still visible. Even if he hadn’t caught a glimpse of the canister, he could have easily figured out she’d come to the library to go through back issues of the Gazette. He’d done the same earlier that morning in his quest to find information both about the case and her father.
Her chin lifted even higher when she regarded him again. She’d shed the traditional doctor’s white coat, revealing a red top that added vibrancy to her complexion and a skirt that showed off a pair of long, beautiful legs. She was undeniably attractive, but it was her underlying spunk that drew him to her, hinting at facets of her he’d yet to discover.
